Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 141

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Plen­ty of the ‘Nones’ Actu­al­ly Head Back to Church (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For athe­ists, the defec­tion rate is about 18 per­cent. Even more strik­ing, about 48 per­cent of agnos­tics defect­ed, as did 42 per­cent of those who described their faith as ‘noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar.’ That’s a stag­ger­ing amount of flux: About half of the agnos­tics in the US in 2010 were no longer agnos­tics by 2014.” There are many details not reflect­ed in this quote — read the whole thing. The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty.
  2. Holy Ambiva­lence (Brad East, LA Review of Books): “The arc of his­to­ry does not bend toward jus­tice; it bent and cracked long ago under the weight of anoth­er Empire’s injus­tice, under Pon­tius Pilate; now it wends in unknown and some­times wicked ways, under our own dis­or­dered direc­tion. Faith con­fess­es that it has been and will be right­ed, once for all, but we know not when or how the denoue­ment will come; only that it will be beyond his­to­ry.” This is a very thought­ful com­men­tary about how Chris­tians should think about the West­ern world.  The author is a the­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Abi­lene Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. The Syr­ia Mem­o­ry Hole Is Open­ing Up a Big­ger Dan­ger (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes referred to the dog that didn’t bark as a tell­tale sign that some­thing unusu­al was going on dur­ing a horse theft. The rel­a­tive lack of atten­tion being paid to the news that U.S.-backed forces killed 200 to 300 Russ­ian mer­ce­nary sol­diers this month in Syr­ia seems like a non-bark­ing dog to me…. I have found that I know plen­ty of well-edu­cat­ed peo­ple, with grad­u­ate degrees and liv­ing in and near Wash­ing­ton, who aren’t even aware this occurred. The sto­ry has fall­en into a mem­o­ry hole, in part because nei­ther the Amer­i­cans nor the Rus­sians wish to esca­late the con­flict.”
  4. No, Fas­cism Can’t Hap­pen Here (Tyler Cowen, Politi­co): “My argu­ment is pret­ty sim­ple: Amer­i­can fas­cism can­not hap­pen any­more because the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is so large and unwieldy. It is sim­ply too hard for the fas­cists, or for that mat­ter oth­er rad­i­cal groups, to seize con­trol of.”
  5. Many things were writ­ten about the recent­ly-deceased Bil­ly Gra­ham  this week. Here are a few that caught my eye:
    • How Bil­ly Gra­ham Killed Com­mu­nism with Kind­ness (David Aik­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “But 19 years lat­er, at least one major jour­nal­is­tic crit­ic of that day had changed his tune. ‘Gra­ham’s efforts con­tributed to the fall of com­mu­nism, and in no small way,’ said Dan Rather in a 2001 inter­view. ‘He was right; I was wrong, big time.’”
    • What Is Bil­ly Graham’s Friend­ship with Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Worth? (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “King is quot­ed as say­ing, ‘Had it not been for the min­istry of my good friend Dr. Bil­ly Gra­ham, my work in the civ­il rights move­ment would not have been as suc­cess­ful as it has been.’”
    • Gra­ham And The Jews: A Com­plex Con­nec­tion (David Neff, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “When Syr­ia and Egypt launched a sur­prise attack on Israel in Octo­ber 1973, it soon became evi­dent that Israel was under severe stress. The Euro­pean pow­ers refused to help. Richard Nixon hes­i­tat­ed to aid Israel for fear of esca­lat­ing inter­na­tion­al ten­sions. But as the cri­sis grew graver, and Israel qui­et­ly threat­ened to use nuclear war­heads, Nixon deliv­ered weapons and sup­plies to sta­bi­lize Israel. Years lat­er, Tanen­baum’s wid­ow told The New York Times that it was only after Gra­ham per­son­al­ly tele­phoned Nixon that the air­lift began.”
    • The Wrong Spite Of His­to­ry (Samuel James, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Social media doesn’t usu­al­ly shock me, but it got me this week. I was gen­uine­ly tak­en aback by the bile and vicious­ness I saw toward Bil­ly Gra­ham and his fam­i­ly from pro­gres­sives, espe­cial­ly LGBT pro­gres­sives. What I saw in dozens of tweets from accounts with shiny blue check­marks was hatred of the sim­plest and most unem­bar­rassed kind. It both­ered me, not least because it threw me: This is Bil­ly Gra­ham we’re talk­ing about. Not a politi­cian, not a cul­ture war­rior. Is it even pos­si­ble to be meek­er and milder as a Chris­t­ian than Bil­ly Gra­ham was, and still actu­al­ly believe the gospel?”
  6. Expro­pri­at­ing land with­out com­pen­sa­tion is impossible—take it from Zim­bab­we (Johann Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo, Quartz): “South Africa will now begin to reclaim land tak­en from black peo­ple near a cen­tu­ry ago with­out pay­back to the cur­rent own­ers, divid­ing pub­lic sen­ti­ment along fears of a ‘land grab’ and cries for jus­tice. On Feb. 27, law­mak­ers over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed in favor to amend the con­sti­tu­tion to allow land expro­pri­a­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion…. If the South African gov­ern­ment seizes pri­vate prop­er­ty for free, some­one some­where with­in the econ­o­my will have to pay.”  The authors are econ­o­mists in South Africa. One is black and one is white.
  7. More on guns — the debate roils on with no sign of abat­ing:
    • A ‘Deeply Lib­er­tar­i­an’ Plan To Restrict Gun Sales (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “The state estab­lish­es a ‘No Gun’ reg­istry. Join­ing is entire­ly vol­un­tary, but upon adding my name, I give up my right to pur­chase a firearm. Not for­ev­er. Not for some set peri­od of time. The waiv­er is in effect only until I change my mind, which I am free to do when­ev­er I like. Sound too easy? This is where the ele­gant part comes in. When I join, I can sup­ply the email address­es for peo­ple who should be noti­fied if I change my mind. If I decide lat­er to drop my name from the reg­istry, nobody can stop me, but there’s a three-week cool­ing-off peri­od.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.
    • What Crit­ics Don’t Under­stand About Gun Cul­ture (David French, The Atlantic): “Because of the threats against my family—and because I don’t want to be depen­dent on a some­times shock­ing­ly incom­pe­tent gov­ern­ment for my family’s security—I car­ry a weapon. My wife does as well. We’re not scared. We’re pre­pared, and that sense of prepa­ra­tion is con­ta­gious. Con­fi­dence is con­ta­gious. Peo­ple want to be empow­ered. That’s how gun cul­ture is built.”
    • Some Thoughts on School Shoot­ings, Media, and the Con­se­quences of Fear (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Con­trary to com­mon wis­dom, mass shoot­ings also occur in Euro­pean coun­tries. I sus­pect, how­ev­er, that the Finnish media don’t cov­er Ger­man shoot­ings as fre­quent­ly as shoot­ings in Flori­da are cov­ered in Nebraska–as a result the larg­er the media-mar­ket the greater the extent of avail­abil­i­ty bias. In oth­er words, the larg­er the media mar­ket the greater the over-esti­ma­tion of rare but vivid events.”
    • Why Gun Laws May Final­ly Change: Kids Are Lead­ing (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Chil­dren are effec­tive mes­sen­gers because they are dif­fi­cult to con­vinc­ing­ly attack. It’s eas­i­er to for­give their excess­es and their mis­takes, and they are not con­strained by hav­ing full-time jobs. The very fact that chil­dren are doing some­thing attracts news cov­er­age.”
    • Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Dis­cov­er Park­land Stu­dents’ Astro­turf­ing? (David Hines, The Fed­er­al­ist): “On Twit­ter, I lost track of the num­ber of bluechecks rhap­sodiz­ing over how effec­tive the kids’ orga­ni­za­tion­al instincts were. But orga­niz­ing isn’t instinc­tive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes real­ly a lot of peo­ple. You don’t just get a few mag­i­cal kids who’re amaz­ing and nat­u­ral­ly good at it.” This is an excel­lent arti­cle with a unfor­tu­nate­ly off-putting title. It’s about how real polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy hap­pens.
    • Nation That Calls Trump ‘Hitler’ Demands He Take All Guns Away (Baby­lon Bee)
  8. Beau­ty and the Body of the Behold­er: Raters’ BMI Has Only Lim­it­ed Asso­ci­a­tion with Rat­ings of Attrac­tive­ness of the Oppo­site Sex (many authors, Obe­si­ty: A Research Jour­nal): “In sum­ma­ry, indi­vid­ual vari­a­tions in rat­ings of phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness are large. There was lit­tle sup­port for the idea of mutu­al attrac­tion as a dri­ver for assor­ta­tive mat­ing. Our data sug­gest that despite over­all trends favor­ing lean­er phe­no­types of both sex­es as most attrac­tive, every­one is beau­ti­ful to some­body of the oppo­site sex.” (empha­sis added)

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  1. Chris­t­ian Breakup Lines (John Crist, YouTube)
  2. Calvin­ist Dog Cor­rects Own­er: ‘No One Is A Good Boy’ (Baby­lon Bee)
  3. Black Pan­ther star bold­ly pro­claims “I fell in love with Jesus” (Philip Koslos­ki, Aleteia): “One of the caus­es behind that suc­cess is break­out star Leti­tia Wright, who plays T’Challa’s lit­tle sis­ter Shuri, a brainy tech­ni­cian who is one of the most lik­able char­ac­ters of the movie. Inter­est­ing­ly, Wright almost nev­er got the role, as she left act­ing com­plete­ly to purse a rela­tion­ship with God.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

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